SOCIOBIOLOGY

Sociobiology is a perspective on
human social behavior made accessible by the publication in 1975 of E.O. Wilson's
Sociobiology and Richard Dawkins's 1976 publication of The
Selfish Gene.

Sociobiology begins with the
assumption that humans are above all else animals and therefore the roots of human social
behavior can be found in our evolutionary heritage. Since sociobiology on genetics and
biological adaptation it is not a sociological perspective.

The term sociobiology has been
replaced to a great extent by the term evolutionary psychology. The central theoretical
question of sociobiology is explaining how cooperative behavior may have evolved between
unrelated individuals. Currently, reciprocal altruism provides the most convincing
explanation.

E. O. Wilson After Twenty
Years - Is Human Sociobiology Possible? Antony Flew, Reading
The second word in the subtitle of this article is crucial. For there can be no doubt but
that the possibility of sociobiology below the human level has already been abundantly
realized in, for instance, the main body of E. O. Wilson's enormous and encyclopedic
treatise Sociobiology: The New Synthesis.

What may more reasonably be
doubted, and what is in fact questioned here, is whether, as Wilson and others hope and
believe, there is much room, or indeed any, for a sociobiology of our own notoriously
wayward and idiosyncratic species. In proposing this particular project Wilson and his
colleagues have seen themselves as promoting a climactic conquest for evolutionary
biology. For surely, they seem to have thought, now, more than a century after Darwin, it
is high time and past time to launch the final assault upon the last citadel.

Ethology, Zoosemiotic and Sociobiology
JACK P. HAILMAN, Department of Zoology, University of Wisconsin Madison
Current research reveals that the somewhat separate subdisciplines ethology, zoosemiotic
and sociobiology function together in clarifying animal behavior. Ethology is taken as the
study of individual behavioral patterns, zoosemiotic as the study of animal communication,
and sociobiology as the study of social organization. The explosive progress in all
research areas cannot be summarized briefly but examples are drawn to provide the flavor
of each subdiscipline and their interactions.

Sociobiology and human nature -
Mu�oz-Rubio J.
Abstract: One of the main theses of sociobiology is that between human beings and the so
called 'social' animals there are no qualitative differences, and it is for this reason
that it is possible to identify in human beings and social animals essentially similar
behaviours. Sociobiologists often take this idea
as a basis for the belief that there exists in the universe an ontological unity that can
be understood by means of the scientific empirical method. Sociobiologists
attempt to build a model of human nature in which the fundamental goal of all human action
is biological survival. Sociobiology underestimates this historical cultural dimension of human
existence and, despite being a discipline grounded in the theory of evolution, it takes
for granted a series of essential principles as unchangeable realities. In this way
sociobiology produces an ideological discourse on human nature, a false representation of
the world which can be of great utility for legitimising many oppressive and
discriminatory practices.

Sociobiology and Moral Discourse - Loyal Rue.
In the intellectual lineage of sociobiology,
this article considers the place of moral discourse in the evolution of emergent systems
for mediating behavior. Given that humans share molecular systems, reflex systems, drive
systems, emotional systems, and cognitive systems with chimpanzees, why is it that human
behavior is so radically different from chimpanzee behavior? The answer is that, unlike
chimps, humans possess symbolic systems, empowering them to override chimplike default
morality in favor of symbolically mediated moral codes.

ETHICS AND SOCIOBIOLOGY - by Peter Singer
Abstract. Sociobiologists make large claims for their subject. This essay assesses the significance of sociobiology for ethics. It argues that
sociobiologists have misunderstood the relevance of facts to values and that their larger
ambitions for their subject are bound to remain unfulfilled. Nevertheless, philosophers
are wrong to ignore sociobiology.

Mealey, Linda (1995) THE SOCIOBIOLOGY OF SOCIOPATHY: AN INTEGRATED EVOLUTIONARY
MODEL.
Sociopaths are outstanding members of society in two senses: politically, they
command attention because of the inordinate amount of crime they commit, and
psychologically, they elicit fascination because most of us cannot fathom the cold,
detached way they repeatedly harm and manipulate others.